


syncopate

by aelescribe



Series: percussive permutations [1]
Category: Dungeons and Daddies (Podcast)
Genre: Deaf Character, Movie: Face/Off, nick is deaf queer and asian we love a triple threat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-13 02:42:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29519655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aelescribe/pseuds/aelescribe
Summary: Nick was never the right kind of whatever people wanted him to be. It was getting harder to celebrate the parts of himself Morgan deemed worth attention. He used to feel special.Now he feels fucked.
Relationships: Glenn Close & Nicolas Close, Glenn Close/Morgan Freeman (Dungeons and Daddies), Nicolas Close & Morgan Freeman
Series: percussive permutations [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2187318
Comments: 6
Kudos: 21
Collections: Father-Son Moments, Nick-Centric Fanfics





	syncopate

**Author's Note:**

> hi hi all! so this started with the close family finger tutting. my brain went: okay but what if its sign language and nick and morgan are both deaf? i think theres a lot of character and story beats enhanced with this concept, or at least shown in a new light, and how that relates to nick's relationship with his parents. i am not deaf myself, so i cant account for nor do i claim to be an expert on the experience--please let me know if i've crossed any lines. i'm here to learn and open for all that entails. 
> 
> there's some mention of social and systemic anti-deaf discrimination practices both nick and morgan experience, so take care. given the grammatical nature of sign language and this being a character study, there's not spoken dialogue, but some visual description of the signs and the translation in italics.
> 
> let me know whatcha think, and hope you enjoy! :)

They met at one of his shows that her then boyfriend dragged her to. That was the last time she wore her hearing aid or hung out with her douchebag ex. She watched him from the stage and was surprised when he made eye contact with her.

His black eyes shone under purple lights. She watched the music flow through his body. The tinny translation from her hearing aid could never capture the intensity of his energy. The way his fingers curled around the mic. The way his hair fell over his shoulders. The way he wound up the crowd but kept coming back to her.

Morgan told him she was deaf and Glenn, instead of asking the questions most people asked, waved down the waitress for a stack of cocktail napkins, wherein he explained it was not rock and roll to force her to adopt a “standard” method of communication so as to make society comfortable or bring him a perceived ease at the cost of her authenticity, and asked if she would be willing to teach him some sign language over a drink.

She gave him a thumbs up and they ditched the scene to play tonsil hockey in the back of his pickup truck—

Nick doesn’t know the rest because Morgan covered his eyes. Judging by the dull rumble of laughter in her chest, it was nothing short of raunchy. The story concludes thus: they left the last two decades back in dusky red Arizona aiming for California blues. Three years later, Nick was born.

When Nick Close was born, like most babies, his cheeks were rosy. Like some babies, his hair was a dark, thick patch on his cony little head. Other things were parsed out more specifically between his parents. Like his father and mother, he was Chinese and Korean, respectively. Like his father, his gaze was nothing short of piercing. Like his mother, his laughter was absolutely infectious.

Also like his mother, Nick was deaf.

There were lots of doctor’s visits, lots of pamphlets, lots of furrowed brows about “what this meant” for the family. Glenn bounced Nick on his lap and stuck to Morgan every time the doctors presented their “concerns” about how he would be raised.

Later, he’ll find out Morgan went through years of speech therapy to make her parents and strangers comfortable. Later, he’ll find out about the trials of implants and hearing aids that were supposed to give Morgan a “fuller” experience of the world instead put her through pain.

Later, Nick will realize the parts of his identity he’s proudest of are those he’s most pressured to minimize for the comfort of others.

 _That is a price I will never allow you to pay_ , Morgan told him. He would remember it for the rest of her life.

He was an excitable toddler with a penchant for rhythm. Like many children, he touched and felt everything he could to learn about the world. Things had reason, things had rhyme. He couldn’t hear his parents calling for him, but he could feel the vibrations of their footsteps in the ground as they chased him around the living room.

Glenn sang to him not so Nick could hear, but because Glenn was always singing. The air around him tingled with vibrations. When he pressed his head to his father’s chest, the undulating strings in his broad chest rumbled through the whole of Nick’s little body.

Morgan made a steady beat on his back come burping time. She wiped his spittle with a laugh unbridled. It could not be contained in a second, a gesture, nor compressed into sound. She laughed with the whole of her body, joyous and free.

Nick knew his mother’s voice through the shape of her lips. She was sweet and erratic. Glenn’s laughs were contained, conditioned, but his grins stretched miles. His gestures were effortless, fluid, thanks to his musician hands.

He could bring the band home to practice in their one bedroom apartment while Morgan and Nick watched something with subtitles on the couch together. The only people who complained about the noise were the neighbors (and yes, they complained a great deal).

Nick was four the first time he sat on a drum throne. The thump of the pedals on the ground reverberated throughout the world. The snare clamped open, shut. Open, shut. Open, shut, like a little clam. His head filled with sensation.

People always asked him, especially since his dad was a musician, how he lived without sound. It was silly. How could he? Every day. There was no sense of absence (No, that came later, that was something else entirely). He simply lived.

Nick was, and is, happy.

Mostly.

Once Morgan died, signing fell out of fashion in the Close household. Radio silence. His teachers and doctors didn’t know how to help him and wouldn’t listen to what he told them he needed.

Nick realized if he was going to play by their rules, he had to know how to speak them, too. Replicate. Assimilate.

It was Nick’s idea to sign up for speech therapy. He had a foundation that would make the transition easier and figured Glenn would find it easier. Something to bring them back together. Something to make an impact. Something. Anything.

His grandpa looks at him like a psycho when he asks for water. Willy rolls his eyes and Barry smiles all pity.

His voice cracks, maybe, the syllables are too loud, sort of, it doesn’t come out quite right, is all. Nick feels freakish. Kids on the playground would always give him those kinds of looks, merciless, silent laughter that he knew was at his expense. They would mock his facial gestures, his signing, mouthing insults at him—and that was just making fun of his deafness. There was a lot to pick from, given his mixed Asian heritage, ill-defined gender, and nonnormative interests.

Nick was never the right kind of person others wanted him to be. It was getting harder to celebrate the parts of himself Morgan deemed worth attention. He used to feel special. Now he feels fucked. Fucked by every part of his identity that made him easy target practice.

He didn’t need their approval. He didn’t need anyone.

He gnaws his nails. The pain grounds him, but he still longs for the drumbeat in the back of his head. Something to drive him forward. A rhythm he can latch onto.

Jodie is an anchor.

He provides a nice, muffled blanket for all these problems. Nicolas gets a hearing aid so he isn’t “missing out” on anything. He’s given a hard outline of all the things he needs to do to be a good, agreeable person, contribute to society, and earn success.

Nicolas still cries himself to sleep. His chest is still caving in. But he’s good at hiding that stuff. There’s no difference between silence and overwhelming static. They both dull the senses. They’re different kinds of pain.

They are _learned_.

Nick wishes, more than anything, for normalcy. To slough off the complicated, meaty parts of himself. They are heavy and sharp and he cannot contain them.

Nicolas lets that all go.

He can do better, be better, tangibly, if he just follows Jodie’s lead. Things will be easier if he goes along with it. Dads are usually right about these sorts of things. Whatever moms do, he doesn’t remember.

_You ok?_

Why he signs to Glenn, he doesn’t know. It’s instinct.

His facial muscles barely move but Nick picks up on the subtlety of his surprise. Why does Nick think that he’s always bad at expressions despite it being crucial to signing grammar, simply because he has to maintain his cool facade at all times, and therefore cannot betray any emotion?

Lips downturned, he deflates, hands sliding down his chest. _Tired_.

Nicolas is, too.

Jodie brings him back to the speaking world, either not happy he’s signing, or signing with Glenn. In that moment, something is severed. He takes pieces of them both and hides them in his heart. He’ll figure out what to do with these later, he promises, becoming later and later.

Nick is tired of moving between worlds when words are not capable of capturing his experience.

Maybe that’s why Glenn picked up a guitar. If you’re saying something, you’re saying nothing at all. Definition revokes ambiguity. Words are dead on paper, can’t breathe life into your experience, can’t make someone understand you live in living color.

Jodie disappears. He’s left with one-eyed Glenn. Figments. Fragments. Fractures.

A campfire, where all performance is born. The woody guitar gets a broad strum one through six. His shadowy throat pulses, Adam's apple bobbing like music notes across the staff.

Nicolas nods to the rhythm of Glenn’s foot meeting the earth. It’s not words that bring him to tears, it’s the look in Glenn’s firelit eye.

Glenn sings. That strange spell he cast over Morgan long ago plucks his heartstrings one at a time. After all, you don’t hear heartbreak. It pulls him inexplicably out of Nicolas and to himself, to all the parts of himself he splits for easiest consumption.

There is no want for Jodie. There is no want for Glenn. Only to understand and be understood.

Morgan.

Nick buries his head in his hands and cries. Nothing impedes his sound. He wonders how shrill his cry, how the air cracks to it, how they have to wince and cover their ears even with his mouth upon his palms.

Grief shakes him to his core. Glenn keeps singing.

Nick almost asks Bill to take him but figures no one can teach him how to be a man anymore than anyone can teach him how to speak anymore than anyone can bother to look after him since his mother died.

 _Fuck_.

Glenn scolds, _You can do better than that._

_Fuck you._

_That’s more like it_. Nick cracks a smile.

Darryl’s is clumsy. He starts with words, gets flustered, and resorts to dad gestures that Nick more or less understands. Pats on the back, thumbs up, simple things. To Ron’s credit, if he was deaf, Nick was sure they still wouldn’t be able to understand each other. Henry does actually know sign language and over eagerly uses it at every opportunity.

The attention is nice, he guesses, even if it’s awkward. No one knows what to do now that he’s crying. When he looks up, Henry is begging to _help_ , thumbs-up thrust forward on palm, asking _what can we do?_

Glenn drops the guitar. Drops to his knees. Drops everything to comfort him.

The embrace is a struggle. Nick wants to be squeezed so tight he pops—and disappears, just like Jodie. Knowing Jodie shatters the illusion of coolness his dad carried until now. There’s this other person in his brain crystallizing all his doubts. If he’ll fade the same way Morgan did. Not that they’re comparable, because they’re not, and even if Jodie was real, he wasn’t Nick’s real _anything_.

Just another lawful assertion that his existence is “too much” for everyone else. _That_ is real.

Nick shudders. Glenn doesn’t let him go. He holds the weight of all things left unsigned. Glenn lets his hands speak, clutching the shitty polo they haven’t found a replacement for yet. His hands say: _I’ve got you. I’m not letting you go_.

It’s taken some time to find their footing. Nick wonders if they ever truly will.

But now it feels possible, more real, materializing before him. Nick cried in his high chair while Morgan and Glenn swayed together in the kitchen to an old static radio in their little one bedroom apartment. Behind Glenn's back, she would sign assurances of love and affection until she got him to smile.

He cries now. Smiles, too.

Glenn’s fist hits his chest, lord have mercy, and digs in. _Sorry, sorry, sorry_ , a circle, a cycle. Nick nods and nods. His whole body trembles. He knows and feels it and knows. The flood of contradicting memories—some Jodie, some Glenn, some Morgan—all well up inside are too vivid to dismiss. They’re not all real but they all feel _true_. This splitting of reality, of hairs, of mind, suddenly snaps his identity into sharp focus.

Nick understands himself, perhaps for the first time.

All these things he can name—but more the things he can’t—are his. No one else’s. He keeps them close and decides to let Glenn in this time.

Nick is wiping tears from his eyes when Glenn’s fingers touch the top of his brow. Gentle, he lets them fall down the length of his face, laughing when they catch his lip and chin on the way down.

Glenn circles the scarred socket on his own face with his other hand, then sharply pulls it away:

_Face off._

Nick starts howling with laughter. He punches Glenn’s shoulder and does it back. Soon, they’re one hysterical mess, dragging their full palms across each other’s faces in a father-son language too insular to even begin to comprehend.

Out of the corner of his eye, he catches Darryl and Ron exchanging glances, looking to Henry for explanation. He just keeps mouthing “face off” and repeating the same sign.

It’s not the same as signing with Morgan. It’s not the same as talking with Jodie. It’s something new, something different, something that will take work. It feels nebulous and ill-defined and, like all good things, defies classification. No system, no structure, no bullshit laws. It’s Glenn reaching out with his entire being. There are no words for that exchange of feeling. 

They have always been doers, rather than thinkers, after all. They figure this shit out on the fly.

Nick grabs hold. And decides to see where it goes. 


End file.
